Blue Cliff

Each Monday, Tiffany posts a message that provides positive energy and tips for eating more mindfully. The purpose of the weekly message is to reinforce the ideas from the talks and classes that are a part of the Como Water Membership, and to further support those living the veg-centric lifestyle. To receive our Mindfulness Mondays posts, Become A Membertoday.

Blue Cliff

On Saturday night I returned from one of the most moving, comforting, reinvigorating, healing and compassionate experiences of my life. For four days, I attended a meditation retreat at the Blue Cliff Monastery in upstate New York. While there, I centered, explored, deepened my practice and met others on the path to gently doing the same.

I had attended meditation retreats before, but they were completely silent retreats. This one was a combination of silent and non-silent, and while this made me nervous (I am totally fine with not talking for four days!), I decided to embrace the structure of the retreat–chanting, story sharing, teachings/lessons, and shared work activities, meals, exercise, and meditation–nonetheless. In all honesty, it took me about a day to embrace the warm camaraderie of the other attendees, and sisters and brothers of the monastery, but once I did, I couldn’t turn back! … and the fun and healing truly began.

I’ve said it before and I’ll probably say it again, there’s no worse feeling in the world than feeling alone–feeling that you are the only one who feels a certain way, or has a certain background, or fights particular personal battles, or sees the world in specific ways. There’s a difference between solitude and feeling alone, and the latter can lead to really sad and harmful times.

This retreat was anti-alone. It was like a deep, warm hug from a vast community. A community of people who didn’t know each other, but who walk similar paths; admittedly paths of that most people will never take, or fully understand. And if I had to sum up my experience in just one phrase, it would be “I am not alone.”

I’m hoping to use the next few Mindfulness Mondays posts to delve into some of the themes from the retreat that were particularly salient for me. In the meantime, here’s a teaser (deliberately cryptic, to hopefully reel you in to future posts)!

Tiffany M. Griffin is the woman behind Como Water, Washington DC’s premiere veg-centric cuisine consulting company. Through cooking classes, demonstrations, catering, and consultations, Como Water gives people the opportunity to learn how to prepare veg-centric cuisine that boasts maximum flavor, with minimal effort.
Tiffany is quickly becoming a go-to expert on the future of veg-centric cuisine, and is a regular contributor to Como Water, the blog, as well as to vegetarian and vegan sites across the Internet. For over a decade, this self-taught, entrepreneurial expert has developed a set of tried and true techniques for making simple, delicious, and sometimes decadent veg-centric dishes.
Featured on the Steve Harvey Show and other leading media outlets, Tiffany was born and raised in Springfield, MA. She then earned Bachelors degrees in Psychology and Communications from Boston College and a PhD in Social Psychology from the University of Michigan. She now resides in Washington DC, where she has worked in the US Senate and at a federal agency on issues around health, food, nutrition, and international food aid/development, and of course, as the owner of Como Water. Tiffany gets culinary inspiration from the food she grew up eating, and from her travels throughout Latin America, the Caribbean, Western Europe, and Sub-Saharan Africa. She is dedicated to sharing her wealth of knowledge on veg-centric cuisine with others and to help others live by her mantra—love life, live long, and eat veg-centric cuisine!